O’Shea’s thorough research and effortless writing exposes the political and economic side of the inquisition and its...
A Franciscan Brother stands up to the inquisition in Southern France, and the inquisition backs down!
The Dominicans, “the hounds of the Lord,” were the leaders in the conflict between Catholic Orthodoxy and the Cathars. O’Shea’s third book on the subject (Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World, 2007) reinforces his reputation as an expert on medieval France and shows how much he has expanded his knowledge of the Cathars’ philosophy and practices. The Albigensian “heretics” came to life in reaction to the technocratic institutionalism of the church. They sought heaven through a life of poverty and new, vernacular interpretations of scriptures, rejecting the wealth and spiritual remoteness of the Catholic Church. Looking upon the church as the enemy, they denied all the sacraments and the cross as anything but an instrument of Roman torture. After the Albigensian Crusade failed to eliminate the Cathars, the Dominicans used the inquisition to complete their total annihilation. From their beginnings in the early 13th century, the inquisitors accused, tried and convicted those denounced as heretics. Once condemned, all lands and possessions were confiscated and their families were left in penury. Those not executed were confined in “the wall,” a prison in Carcassonne where they were tortured and starved to the end of their lives. This prison was the tipping point for Brother Bernard Délicieux, who used his great rhetorical gifts to convince the king’s magistrate to secure a personal audience for him with Philip the Fair. Délicieux’s formidable powers of persuasion convinced the king to take steps against the Dominican abuse, but he did not free the prisoners of the wall. Délicieux enjoyed support from the king, his magistrates and certainly from the Franciscan Order as he continued his fight to eliminate the inquisition—but the deviant inquisitors. His status was so great that his Order appealed to him to calm rising tempers in Carcassonne.
O’Shea’s thorough research and effortless writing exposes the political and economic side of the inquisition and its irreversible damage to the Catholic Church.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8027-1994-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
Internationally renowned because of his earlier books, among them tape Letters, Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis making religion provoking, memorable and delightful is still more latest Reflections on the Psalms. Though he protests that he writes learned about things in which he is unlearned himself, the reader is likely thank God for his wise ignorance. Here especially he throws a clear lightly or not, on many of the difficult psalms, such as those which abound with and cursing, and a self-centeredness which seems to assume' that God must be side of the psalmist. These things, which make some psalm singers pre not there, have a right and proper place, as Mr. Lewis shows us. They of Psalms more precious still. Many readers owe it to themselves to read flections if only to learn this hard but simple lesson. Urge everyone to book.
Pub Date: June 15, 1958
ISBN: 015676248X
Page Count: 166
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958
Vintage McCullough and a book that students of American history will find captivating.
A lively history of the Ohio River region in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War.
McCullough (The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, 2015, etc.) isn’t writing about the sodbusters and hardscrabblers of the Far West, the people whom the word “pioneers” evokes, but instead their predecessors of generations past who crossed the Appalachians and settled in the fertile country along and north of the Ohio River. Manasseh Cutler, one of his principal figures, “endowed with boundless intellectual curiosity,” anticipated the movement of his compatriots across the mountains well before the war had ended, advocating for the Northwest Ordinance to secure a region that, in McCullough’s words, “was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life”—a place in which slavery was forbidden and public education and religious freedom would be emphasized. “Ohio fever” spread throughout a New England crippled, after the war, by economic depression, but Southerners also moved west, fomenting the conditions that would, at the end of McCullough’s vivid narrative, end in regional war three generations later. Characteristically, the author suggests major historical themes without ever arguing them as such. For example, he acknowledges the iniquities of the slave economy simply by contrasting the conditions along the Ohio between the backwaters of Kentucky and the sprightly city of Cincinnati, speaking through such figures as Charles Dickens. Indeed, his narrative abounds with well-recognized figures in American history—John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Johnny Appleseed—while highlighting lesser-known players. His account of Aaron Burr—who conspired to overthrow the government of Mexico (and, later, his own country) after killing Alexander Hamilton, recruiting confederates in the Ohio River country—is alone worth the price of admission. There are many other fine moments, as well, including a brief account of the generosity that one farmer in Marietta, Ohio, showed to his starving neighbors and another charting the fortunes of the early Whigs in opposing the “anti-intellectual attitude of the Andrew Jackson administration.”
Vintage McCullough and a book that students of American history will find captivating.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6868-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2019
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